API ReferencesGeneration

Generate gRPC API Reference

View as Markdown

Fern generates gRPC API Reference documentation from your Protocol Buffer (.proto) files. Add your .proto files to your Fern project and Fern renders services, RPCs, messages, and types as an interactive reference.

Configuration

1

Set up your project structure

Add your .proto files to your /fern directory and create a generators.yml that references them:

generators.yml
1api:
2  specs:
3    - proto:
4        root: ./proto
5        target: proto/service/v1/service.proto
2

Add the gRPC Reference to your navigation

Add - api: API Reference to your navigation in docs.yml:

docs.yml
1navigation:
2  - api: API Reference

Fern will automatically populate your services, RPCs, message types, and enums from your .proto files.

3

Customize the layout

For a full list of configuration options and layout customizations, see Customize API Reference layout.

Include more than one gRPC Reference

To include multiple gRPC definitions in your documentation, use the api-name property. The api-name corresponds to the folder name containing your gRPC definition.

fern
fern.config.json
docs.yml
user-api
proto
user_service.proto# User gRPC service
generators.yml
billing-api
proto
billing_service.proto# Billing gRPC service
generators.yml
docs.yml
1navigation:
2  - api: User API
3    api-name: user-api
4  - api: Billing API
5    api-name: billing-api

Configuration properties

api.specs[].proto
Required

Path to your gRPC specification file. You can include multiple gRPC specs if your project exposes more than one API.